Andy Grove, the Silicon Valley elder statesman who made Intel into the world's top chipmaker and helped usher in the personal computer age, died on Tuesday at age 79, Intel said.

The company did not describe the circumstances of his death but Grove, who endured the Nazi occupation of Hungary during World War Two, living under a fake name, and came to the United States to escape the chaos of Soviet rule, had suffered from Parkinson's.

Grove was Intel's first hire after it was founded in 1968 and became the practical-minded member of a triumvirate that eventually led "Intel Inside" processors to be used in more than 80 percent of the world's personal computers.

With his motto "only the paranoid survive," which became the title of his best-selling management book, Grove championed an innovative environment within Intel that became a blueprint for successful California startups.